Whether you think iOS 5 is revolutionary or not it has added some much needed features. Whenever I take a picture on a mobile device I usually do no spend much time going back through my pictures and organzing them, sharing them, or uploading them to my computer. With the new features in iCloud I can now take a picture on my device and it will autmoatically upload it to my computer (if you have the newest version of iPhone or you set up the Windows iCloud Control Panel.)

When you take a picture and are connected to the Internet the picture will automatically sync to your Photo Stream. You can then open up your Photo Stream on a different device or computer to see your pictures. These pictures will be in the cloud for 30 days so you can pull the pictures out of the folders on your computer and put them where you want. If you don’t move them within 30 days of taking them they will be removed from the Photo Stream and then only be available on the device that took the picture.

This feature is pretty awesome but I still will probably forget about the pictures and they will be off my Photo Stream before I have the chance to get them off. I usually upload all my picture through Piciasa to my web albums so they are always availalbe online no matter where I am. So my goal was to be able to take a picture on my iPad and then have the picture show up in my web albums. I was able to do it and this is how it was done.

First make sure that Photo Stream is enable on your device under iCloud. Then install the iCloud Control Panel on your computer. With this you can select where pictures will upload to when you take a picture on your device. next install Picasa and sign into your Gmail account to enable the ability to upload your photos to your web albums. Then make sure that you add the download folder that will have your Photo Stream photos to always keep updated in Picasa. Then once Picasa finds the folder switch it to upload to web albums. I would like to not here it is a good idea to check your Picasa settings and make sure that you are uploading the original size picture. Also make sure that you set Picasa to read all the different file types especially .png if you want screen shots to upload.

After that you are all set up and read to go. If you keep Picasa open on your computer they will instantly upload to the web albums. In my tests it took about 20 seconds form the time I took a picture for it to show up on my web albums. If you choose to close Picasa it will not automatically upload the photos, just make sure you open it up every once in a while to upload your photos.

Now that all your pictures are on the web you don’t need to worry if anything happens to the photos on your device. Now you can delete them, share them, or download them when it is convenient for you. I hope this helps!